Max preps top 25 small town teams

izzy

New member
2 Ohio teams made the top 25, Marion Local at 13 and Clinton-Massie at 15. Schools had to have fewer than 1000 students and be in a town of less than 10,000.
 
 
Call me biased, but I consider 'small town' as 5K or less.

Carry on.
I have to agree, because there’s plenty of regions where 10K residents would be seen as ‘mid-size’ or “large.”

There’s flaws with lists. Population distributions are a tight needle to thread in the discussion of what makes a “small” town.
 
China Spring, the team at the top of the list, is not a small town. It's a suburb of Waco, Texas. I figured this list would make no distinction between small suburbs and actual small towns. Lorena is another suburb of Waco and is on the list. It's not a small town if you are next to a city that easily has over 130,000 people. It doesn't matter what the population of the "small town" is.

Carthage, Texas, is actually a small town. Same goes for Franklin and Bellville.

Aliquippa is a suburb of Pittsburgh. That's another town that definitely should not be on the list.
 
I don't know if I would any D4 team in with "small schools" in Ohio. I would say D5 or lower.

I wonder if he did the work to interpolate the enrollments of the schools. OHSAA determines your class/division by number of boys in three grades. Texas determines this by number of kids in four grades.

Marion Local was the smallest school on the list. I would love to see them play anybody on this list who is less than 500 students.
 
Maybe the handful of posters who see games all over the country could check in, but I'd be surprised if MSML couldn't give any school of similar size and demographic makeup a game.
 
Maybe the handful of posters who see games all over the country could check in, but I'd be surprised if MSML couldn't give any school of similar size and demographic makeup a game.
I was shocked to hear someone call a city of 24,000 as a "small town" when I traveled.

I wouldn't call Lorena a suburb. China Spring, sure.

As for Aliquippa, no. It's not a suburb. Suburbs end around McKees Rocks at the furthest or Bellevue across the river. Maybe up to Sewickley.

As for small schools, best I saw would probably be Shiner. And that was mostly because of Doug Brooks being a freak of nature.
 
China Spring, the team at the top of the list, is not a small town. It's a suburb of Waco, Texas. I figured this list would make no distinction between small suburbs and actual small towns. Lorena is another suburb of Waco and is on the list. It's not a small town if you are next to a city that easily has over 130,000 people. It doesn't matter what the population of the "small town" is.

Carthage, Texas, is actually a small town. Same goes for Franklin and Bellville.

Aliquippa is a suburb of Pittsburgh. That's another town that definitely should not be on the list.
Aliquippa is near Pittsburgh and it’s anything but a suburb. It’s a once thriving steel town that has lost 70% of its population since 1970. It’s an old proud city but decaying. Not a suburb.
 
Aliquippa is near Pittsburgh and it’s anything but a suburb. It’s a once thriving steel town that has lost 70% of its population since 1970. It’s an old proud city but decaying. Not a suburb.

Where does it say in the dictionary that a suburb can't lose population?


noun
1. a district lying immediately outside a city or town, especially a smaller residential community.
2. the suburbs, the area composed of such districts.
3. an outlying part.
 
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Where does it say in the dictionary that a suburb can't lose population?


noun
1. a district lying immediately outside a city or town, especially a smaller residential community.
2. the suburbs, the area composed of such districts.
3. an outlying part.
To the people in Allegheny County.... Nobody considers Aliquippa a suburb of Pittsburgh. They're just not.
 
Where does it say in the dictionary that a suburb can't lose population?


noun
1. a district lying immediately outside a city or town, especially a smaller residential community.
2. the suburbs, the area composed of such districts.
3. an outlying part.
I was just trying to be informative but since you had to be a smart I’ll be more informative. You can look in the dictionary all you want. I live in Alaquippa. We are 30 miles from Pittsburgh. We arent and never have been a suburb of Pittsburgh.
 
Call me biased, but I consider 'small town' as 5K or less.

Carry on.
Well according to the Ohio Constitution, any municipal under 5,000 population is considered a village so they couldn't be considered a town. ? j/k 10,000 is rather large. I don't consider this list whole because just because 1 loss after winning 55 straight should not drop Kirtland out of the top 25
 
China Spring, the team at the top of the list, is not a small town. It's a suburb of Waco, Texas. I figured this list would make no distinction between small suburbs and actual small towns. Lorena is another suburb of Waco and is on the list. It's not a small town if you are next to a city that easily has over 130,000 people. It doesn't matter what the population of the "small town" is.

Carthage, Texas, is actually a small town. Same goes for Franklin and Bellville.

Aliquippa is a suburb of Pittsburgh. That's another town that definitely should not be on the list.
Aliquippa has about 70 students in their Senior class, next year it will be about 60. Thats a small school by any standard.
 
China Spring, the team at the top of the list, is not a small town. It's a suburb of Waco, Texas. I figured this list would make no distinction between small suburbs and actual small towns. Lorena is another suburb of Waco and is on the list. It's not a small town if you are next to a city that easily has over 130,000 people. It doesn't matter what the population of the "small town" is.

Carthage, Texas, is actually a small town. Same goes for Franklin and Bellville.

Aliquippa is a suburb of Pittsburgh. That's another town that definitely should not be on
Aliquippa seems to be a town that no one is moving to despite being near Pittsburg, so I can see why its on the list.
 
#9 Brock Texas seems rather interesting. Population of 100, but the school has 435 kids. Same with Clinton-Massie, 540 kids with a population of 548. Now there’s 4 couples that are staying “busy”.
 
#9 Brock Texas seems rather interesting. Population of 100, but the school has 435 kids. Same with Clinton-Massie, 540 kids with a population of 548. Now there’s 4 couples that are staying “busy”.
The districts cover far more territory than the town it's named after. Especially in rural Texas, many people are spread out in agriculture and ranching. Their "town" has hardly anyone
 
1000 students in a HS are considered small? Maria Stein does not have a population of 2000. Unless you count chickens, goats, pigs, and cows.
We chatted about this a bit in the NW Ohio Realignment thread. Ohio in general has an incredibly split up public high school system compared to most states where districts are considerably more consolidated. In most states Coldwater-St Henry-Ft Recovery would all be probably one HS for example
 
1We chatted about this a bit in the NW Ohio Realignment thread. Ohio in general has an incredibly split up public high school system compared to most states where districts are considerably more consolidated. In most states Coldwater-St Henry-Ft Recovery would all be probably one HS for example
This is common in states like Kansas or Iowa. You have some really big schools that are "in the middle of nowhere" just because they cover a large territory. But by being a large school, they can offer their students a lot such as electives, sports, etc because schools being really tiny like Sebring, Vanlue, Holgate, Stryker just generally don't happen unless they're very isolated.

But in Ohio it seems 10 miles is too far from a school for some.


Edit:

Probably the most extreme case is Garfield County, Montana. The county is 10.8% the size of Ohio. Has one school district and one high school. The entire county has a population of 1,206.

The entire school is just big enough in Jordan to have a 6-man football team. I saw a game there. Quite an interesting experience.

The district west of them is Winnett (37 students, k-12) which had a co-op with Grass Range (70 students, k-12). Saw a game here. They played Rosebud. Which no longer plays football at all due to enrollment. Grass Range/Winnett now is part of a five school co-op in Fergus County and still only has 6-man football.

A five-team co-op would be logistically difficult even if every school was close to each other. Denton, Geyser and Stanford are each at least 70 miles away from both Grass Range and Winnett, with the longest distance (Geyser to Winnett) being 114 miles (about a two-hour drive).

Link

And people complain about game travel. Can you imagine driving 140 miles round trip just for practice?

2011 HSF Wk 08 Grass Range/Winnett (MT) v. Rosebud (MT)
 
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I was just trying to be informative but since you had to be a smart I’ll be more informative. You can look in the dictionary all you want. I live in Alaquippa. We are 30 miles from Pittsburgh. We arent and never have been a suburb of Pittsburgh. I just looked in the dictionary and under “idiot with an uniformed opinion” I found you as the definition.
With regard to Aliquippa losing population, you didn't tell me anything that I didn't already know.

If you had said that you lived there and that residents don't consider it a suburb, I also would have ended the conversation right there.

You instead chose a personal attack.
 
We chatted about this a bit in the NW Ohio Realignment thread. Ohio in general has an incredibly split up public high school system compared to most states where districts are considerably more consolidated. In most states Coldwater-St Henry-Ft Recovery would all be probably one HS for example

Yes, Ohio loves its high schools. It has a whole lot of them.
 
This is common in states like Kansas or Iowa. You have some really big schools that are "in the middle of nowhere" just because they cover a large territory. But by being a large school, they can offer their students a lot such as electives, sports, etc because schools being really tiny like Sebring, Vanlue, Holgate, Stryker just generally don't happen unless they're very isolated.

But in Ohio it seems 10 miles is too far from a school for some.

It's kind of like the hatred of driving more than two hours for a playoff game.

In West Virginia, a lot of counties have only one high school.
 
Aliquippa has about 70 students in their Senior class, next year it will be about 60. Thats a small school by any standard.
if i recall , Woody Hayes always made it a school that he went and visited, and they have sent a few players back in the day to Tosu....
 
if i recall , Woody Hayes always made it a school that he went and visited, and they have sent a few players back in the day to Tosu....

Their alumni include Mike Ditka, Ty Law, and Sean Gilbert. I remember once on one of those NFL pre-game shows that they were talking about the "greatest game." Ditka commented: "Ambridge-Aliquippa...." The composer Henry Mancini and the father of Pete Maravich also graduated from Aliquippa.

Tony Dorsett also went to the nearby Hopewell High.
 
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